The Times of Israel reports: Daniel Shapiro, the US ambassador to Israel during the Obama administration, said on Saturday that the move initiated by US President Donald Trump to transfer the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem may help end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

…In an essay published on CNN.com Saturday, Shapiro said that amid the concerns about the decision “and its impact on prospects for peace,” he would be taking the “contrarian view” that the controversial transfer of the US Embassy to Jerusalem “can actually help advance an end to the conflict.”

Trump’s announcement to move ahead with the relocation of the embassy, was “recognizing a reality, and, in a sense, correcting a long-held historical anachronism,” Shapiro said, citing the president. “The shattering of this taboo is useful in its own right. But it also helps return the search for a resolution to this conflict to its origins,” he wrote, calling the move an “overdue step” that may “actually bring closer the day when the issue long deemed the hardest in the conflict to solve may in fact become the most obvious.”